Qingdao Transportation

Get yourself a Chinese-/ English tourist map of Qingdao.
They are sold on the street - usually the sales people will fine you!

When travelling from point A to point B, go to a bus stop.
Approach a young men or women - they might speak a little English.

Point in your map where you want to go - they can help you to pick the right bus number which goes into your direction. If you´re lucky they travel with you and tell you when to get off. The bus ticket is usually 1 RMB. At the entrance of the bus is a box - waiting for your money. Make sure you have alway enough small money with you.
In rare situations - there is no box - then you have to pay at a conductor.

I found one company which offers tour guides for about 800 RMB per day.
If this is within your budget, please contact me and I will send you the link to their website.

That was outside my budget so I visited Qingdao myself.

Travelling by taxi from attraction to attraction usually costs only between 8 and 15 RMB.
Travelling by bus just 1 RMB.

The city has started to build a metro/underground system.

The airport has currently 3 shuttle bus lines into Qingdao (Jan 2008). This is easily the cheapest way to head into town (unless you've managed to persuade a friend to come pick you up).

Immediately on exiting the terminal building, look for a booth selling tickets (marked in English 'Qingdao Liuting International Airport Shuttle Bus'). This is before you cross the road where the taxi line is. The airport is really quite small so you can't miss it. Tickets are RMB 15 per person and you will receive a ticket from the person in the booth. The booth has the 3 routes marked in English on the outside. Even if you have no idea where you're going, it's still cheaper to take routes 1 or 2 into town and then take a taxi to wherever!

Buses run from 6am to 9pm and leave every 15-30 minutes (depending on the time of day). You will need to place your luggage in the luggage compartments under the bus, or if full, take them onto the bus. The driver will assist you.

There are tour boats in Qingdao that will take you from one point to another along the coast. There are also scenic boats that will take you for a ride in the Yellow Sea. You can catch the tour boats at the dock near the the Marines Museum and the Little Qingdao island park.

Even if the map is seemingly full of rail tracks, the slowness of railways is Shandong is making it a less attractive option than bus. There are express buses to Weihai at half the time spent thant by train, and you can cut across from Weihai to Dalian on the ferry easily.

If you will save some time and don't want to bother about the towns and landscapes en route, fly to Qingdao from Beijing. It's a short hop that will cost you about 1600 Y return. Air China flies a few times a day, and there are also connections to other cities.

I walked across the city one day. This was so much fun because you don't miss anything. It tests your sense of direction and improves your knowledge of the city greatly. The streets always seem to be torn up and rebuilt. This picture shows the board that I had to cross over a ditch to get to work for a couple of weeks. The construction and re-construction is a pain but it is quite humorous when taken with the right frame of mind.

I'd say the train - it gets you fairly into the city, and you can walk from there to some decent hotels. The ocean is just a few blocks away with lots of seafood restaurants nearby. The cathedral is pretty close as well.
Qingdao is a LONG city, so if you want to get to the other parts, like by the Tsingtao factory, take a cab or bus. We took cabs most of the time to save time but the buses weren't too difficult to use there.